Our Voice project’s in-person event

In the Summer of 2024, Our Voice project participants marked their one-year anniversary of the Young people meeting regularly online. We decided to commemorate this event, by bringing them together for their first in-person day. The day’s activities focused on Our Voice participants developing campaign skills through banner making, which was lots of fun. ALLFIE’s Youth Parliamentary Co-Lead, Maresa MacKeith, also talked us through her presentation on ALLFIE’s upcoming Young People’s Parliament. An amazing day of fun and activism! 

On 22nd August 2024, Our Voice participants met with ALLFIE staff for the first in-person day of the project. The aim was for the Young people to get to know each other, and also to continue their work on activism focused on inclusive education. The event opened with ice breakers to get to know each other better, as although the group has been meeting online regularly since June 2023, this was the first time they met each other in person. 

Next up, ALLFIE’s Youth Parliamentary Lead, Maresa Mckeith, showed and explained her Powerpoint presentation about the upcoming ALLFIE Youth Parliamentary group. This covered what ALLFIE’s Youth Parliament is and why it’s important, what it aims to achieve, and examples of other UK Youth Parliament models.

• For more information here is Maresa’s presentation: Youth Parliamentary Models (Pdf)

This was followed by a Q&A session on how to make the Parliament for Young Disabled people accessible and inclusive, and what type of model ALLFIE should adopt. The Young Disabled People’s Parliament is an upcoming project which will form an important part of ALLFIE’s capacity building and campaigning work, with the key aim of making sure Disabled Young people’s voices are heard in Parliament. 

We then moved onto the main activity for the day, which was banner making for activism. Our Voice members thought about and discussed the messages they wanted to be heard about inclusion in education. This included drawing on some of their own lived experiences as motivation, and to develop ideas for campaigning messages. 

Our Voice members used a variety of art materials to create protest banners to campaign for, and show the importance of, inclusive education. 

ALLFIE’s Director, Michelle Daley, attended the event and was on hand to support the Young people, and helped them develop their campaign messages and artworks.

The event was jointly organised with ALLFIE’s Stronger Voices project. ALLFIE’s Capacity Building Lead, Lani Parker, worked alongside Yewande Akintelu-Omoniyi to facilitate an interactive Line of Truth game. This was a fun way for everyone to learn more about each other and build connections.

Yewande Akintelu-Omoniyi, ALLFIE’s Our Voice Youth Project Co-Lead, facilitated the day and added a fnal thought:

“The success of the day shows why it is important for Young Disabled People to connect in person in a relaxed environment. It brings the best out of them when doing activism work and makes it enjoyable. It also brought the best out of the ALLFIE team, as Our Voice took the lead for the day. We learn and grow as a movement when we take the lead from the Young people.

The banners